


rêverie

by yoshizora



Category: Metroid Series, Super Mario Galaxy
Genre: F/F, Zine: Smashing Hearts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-14
Updated: 2019-07-14
Packaged: 2020-06-28 01:04:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,719
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19801510
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yoshizora/pseuds/yoshizora
Summary: Everybody needs to love and be loved, don’t they?





	rêverie

**Author's Note:**

> this is my piece for _Smashing Hearts_ , a Super Smash Bros charity zine by WLW! you can find the twitter for it [here](https://twitter.com/smashinghearts), and get a copy for yourself [here](https://gumroad.com/l/SMASHHEART).
> 
> samus had been my favorite video game character ever since i was a kid, and rosalina's story in super mario galaxy hit me deeply when i played it for the first time. this story itself isn't relevant to smash bros (hence why i didn't tag it) since i wanted to explore how they could interact and relate to each other within their own universe, outside of the crossover nexus of smash.

_“You’ve traveled a long way, haven’t you?”_

From the depths of the cosmos come a blazing comet of steel, thunderous and terrifying. But it isn’t a comet. It’s a ship— some kind of ship, and it plummets upon a tiny little planet. A minute passes. Then another. Then, a person emerges from the wreckage, trembling and unsteady. 

The Lumas catch her by the shoulders first, chirping in excitement and gathering in a tight swarm to keep her upright with all their combined effort. She’s too weak to shake them off. All she can do is look up.

Someone stands before her, radiant in the light of the stars.

_”What’s your name?”_

The optics of her visor are going haywire, flashing red and green and red and green and distorting visuals to a point where she’s not quite certain if it’s her _head_ or her helmet, if the fuzziness at the edges is her _head_ or her helmet, or if her scanner had gone dark or if she’s going blind. Her mouth is dry. Her throat is dry. The sound of her own breathing is like pins and needles in her ears. 

Cool air hisses over sweaty skin as her helmet is pried off. The woman who’d found her smiles down at her, and Samus softly exhales. 

* * *

Their new guest doesn’t seem very keen on conversation, so much that Rosalina initially mistakes her to be mute. But on the second day, when she wakes up and sits upright in the bed she’d been put in, her shoulders relax when she sees her suit neatly arranged against the wall. Two Lumas are busy at work, polishing it with bits of cloth. She gives them her thanks and Rosalina offers apricot-flavored tea. 

That ship is… lodged deep within the unlucky planet she’d crashed into. Rosalina explains her current situation and her guest shows no outward reaction, but she does sip at the tea and makes eye contact for a fleeting second. It’s enough.

“What’s your name?” she tries.

“… Samus.” 

The tea is too sweet. Samus doesn’t complain.

“Please, Samus, stay here with us as long as you need.”

Samus doesn’t complain.

* * *

She inspects the wreckage of her Gunship in her usual silence, diligent and focused and allowing the Lumas to curiously flutter around her. The hull is more or less intact, and it’d stopped smoldering a while ago, but she mutters something about the recharge system.

Rosalina understands roughly half of what she says. She decides not to ask Samus, because of the crease between her brows and the way she frowns at the crater. 

“My home will be your home, for the time being,” Rosalina says. 

There is a pause of hesitation in the way Samus’s shoulders tense. But the crease between her brows smooths out and she stares up at Rosalina, as if she can’t quite believe what she’s looking at. 

“We can help fix it,” she adds, when Samus doesn’t say anything. The Lumas circle around them, dancing. “Won’t you accept our help?

Samus still doesn’t say anything, but she reaches out to the dancing circle of Lumas. The smallest one of the bunch chirps and moves up her arm to bump up against her cheek, and her eyes soften. 

“Alright.”

* * *

What could these moments be called, when they have a moment to breathe and the Lumas scatter to play? Ah, wonder! Such a carefree life, flying through their corner of the universe to post up new planets and stars and galaxies like ornamental baubles in a magnificent tree. Samus watches the birth of a new planet with _wonder_ in her eyes, feeling so small beside Rosalina. 

Ah, wonder.

Space has always been cold and quiet and wrought with threat. Terror. Hostility. Creatures grotesque and spewing acid and spewing guts when Samus tore through them with her artillery. 

Here, far beyond the jurisdiction of the Galactic Federation, it’s warm and vivid and Rosalina hums when she brews apricot-flavored tea. The stars and galaxies shine so bright, and Rosalina can name every single one, because they have all been her children at one point or another. 

Ah, wonder. 

She tells her the name of the planet Samus’s Gunship had crash-landed upon, and Samus suddenly feels compelled to apologize. But Rosalina says it’s a fortunate thing, really, because they haven’t had any guests in such a long time, and she laughs while the steam from her tea wisps over her face.

Her laugh is the same color as the stars, and Samus wonders about it.

* * *

“Do you ever get lonely?” Rosalina asks. 

The question strikes her like a tightly-wound fist, and Samus’s breath catches in her throat. She looks upward, at a pinprick in the sky that’s about to burst and become a newborn planet. 

Does she get lonely? No, because this is how she’d lived out most of her life. Out in that frigid emptiness of space, there was few she could turn to. 

The Galactic Federation and other bounty hunters weren’t company. Not in the way the comets and stars and planets are company for Rosalina. 

_But, once—_

“... No,” she finally says. “I don’t.”

“I once thought…” Rosalina begins. “That we were all alone, in this universe.”

“You aren’t,” Samus says. 

“That’s right. I’ve always had my family, right here beside me.” She smiles. Lumas graze against her open palms and nudge her shoulders. “What about you, Miss Bounty Hunter?”

“I don’t have family.” 

“That won’t do. Everybody needs to love and be loved.”

_A long time ago—_

* * *

Star Bits taste like honey. The apricot-flavored tea Rosalina brews is sweeter, but Samus makes a point of accepting every Star Bit a Luma offers while she works on her Gunship. 

“They’ve taken to you,” Rosalina says. She only watches for the most part, knowing when to keep her distance and respect the space Samus needs while she fiddles with live wires. 

Samus sucks on a Star Bit in deep thought. 

It’s sweet like honey, and Rosalina’s tea soothes the aches from her feet to her shoulders and then some, and the Lumas call out for her in the same way they call for Rosalina. She feels it throughout every inch of her being. Her Power Suit hasn’t been touched in days, still standing in a corner of the room like a reminder. 

Out here, it’s easy to forget what else lurks in other quadrants of the universe. Out there, it’s so very dark and so very cold. Out here, the stars celebrate their life with bursts of exhilaration and comet tails. 

Rosalina hums as she watches, and Samus feels it at the back of her neck, as warm and sweet as the tea she brews. 

Someday, she’ll tell Rosalina about the hatchling, because only she would understand how to mourn and grieve the loss of something so inexplicable. 

Everybody needs to love and be loved, don’t they?

* * *

She finally dons the Power Suit and uses her firearms to harvest Star Bits. Her Arm Cannon is handy for breaking crystalline stalagmites open. The Power Beam clears drifting debris. The same kinds of missiles that have ripped through the bellies of beasts now scatter colorful bits everywhere for delighted Lumas to gather. 

Even in the suit, Rosalina still towers over her. Samus looks up— her helmet is fixed, the Scan Visor pulses gentle light over her image— and offers an armful of Star Bits to her. 

Rosalina smiles. The tips of her fingers brush along the cold, hard exterior of Samus’s suit, finding the catch at the bottom of her helmet to lift it away so she may press her lips to her cheek.

* * *

“I wasn’t lonely,” Samus says one evening, as they watch a comet slowly streak far, far away. “My family…”

They’re gone now. 

Not much needs to be said about that. 

“A long, long time ago, I lived on a lovely little planet with my mother, father, and brother,” Rosalina says, understanding how to fill the empty spaces Samus leaves. “I was only a child. The day came when I began to look out to the stars, waiting for them to return, searching for them…”

A Luma wobbles over, and Rosalina fondly holds it. “I wanted to find my mother.”

Something hard catches in Samus’s throat, and she forces herself to keep watching the comet’s slow march across the universe. 

“But you never did find her.”

Rosalina’s gentle smile never turns regretful, not once. She passes the Luma to Samus, who manages not to fumble. 

“No, I didn’t.”

Her breath shudders when she exhales, and Samus hugs the Luma close with one arm. Her other hand finds Rosalina’s. 

“But I found something else just as wonderful, if not more.” 

Oh, how badly she wants to stay, to partake in this warmth and joy and allow herself a piece of that happiness.

* * *

The Federation gets through eventually. They always do. 

Rosalina doesn’t ask, when Samus’s Gunship growls to life and she spends an hour in there, sorting out her affairs and reassuring this person and that person that she hadn’t died on her latest mission. And learning of the most recent Space Pirates’ raid. 

They share one last pot of apricot-flavored tea between them. The Lumas cry and cling to her hands. 

Samus thinks of the taste of honey in her mouth, and of using her Grapple Beam to pull Star Bits to her, and of Rosalina kissing her cheek and her forehead and then her lips. 

She tastes a bit like those apricots she’s so fond of, Samus thinks, as they kiss one more time. 

“If you ever feel like it…”

“I’ll come back,” Samus says, grave and promising. “Someday.”

Out of want and necessity and everything she still hasn’t been able to quite wrap her mind around? This corner of the universe is radiant, nothing like she’d seen before. It’s… _beautiful_ , ephemeral and so very real. Not real like the terrible things out where Space Pirates roam. Real like a dream. A dream, then a memory, to carry close to her heart to keep it beating steady.

“Will you be lonely?” Rosalina asks, pulling back the Lumas who try to follow Samus. 

“Without you? Yes.” 

Her Gunship leaves a trail behind like a comet; it lingers for some time, burning bright as far as the eye can see.

**Author's Note:**

> comments and thoughts would be loved!


End file.
